Heartache, comebacks & predicting the future – the story of Archer’s return

One of Jofra Archer’s closest cricket friends is Saqib Mahmood.

“With Jof the easiest thing for him to have done is just gone purely white ball”, Mahmood tells BBC Sport.

He would have enjoyed better financial circumstances and all of that. But I could always tell he wanted to play Test cricket. I was already aware of it.

Mahmood could be proven right next week after Archer was called into England’s squad for the second Test against India. Archer returns to cricket’s biggest stage after four and a half years of injury-ravaged play.

It becomes easy to forget how talented Jofra Archer was during his first international summer in 2019.

A World Cup winner and an Ashes weapon, he seemingly had it all.

He was just 24 when he took six wickets and won Ben Stokes’ miracle in a super over to win a 50-over World Cup against New Zealand, delivered one of Steve Smith’s best fast bowling spells against Australia on his Test debut, and swing it around corners at Headingley.

He took 22 wickets in four matches in that Ashes series. He had already taken three five-wicket hauls in his seventh Test, which is the most Andrew Flintoff has managed in his entire career.

“What was quite nice is other teams didn’t know what he was capable of because they hadn’t seen him.

It resembled a cheat code, I thought. As soon as I saw him bowl I thought he was going to dominate international cricket because he is a serious talent, especially for such a young guy. “

However, the difficult second album, released in the following winter, was the difficult debut album, if Archer’s first summer was the album that sold.

Only two wickets came across two Tests in a series defeat in New Zealand.

Captain Joe Root remarked to him that “every spell counts” after he bowled 42 overs in the first Test in one innings.

” You really have got to run in and use that extra pace to your advantage, “Root said.

Soreness in Archer’s right elbow on the tour of South Africa was revealed to be a stress fracture in early 2020.

Although he returned that summer and endured the winter, his most recent Test was in February 2021, when he played in India’s third match.

Archer underwent surgery on the elbow that May, did so again the following December when the issue was not resolved and then sustained a stress fracture in his back in 2022.

Archer’s career was at its most ominous of turning points when the elbow issue resurfaced in 2023.

” I remember the 2022 T20 World Cup]which England won in Australia] me and Jof were both in Dubai in a hotel watching the final, “says Mahmood, who was also out injured at that time.

We both resembled “we would love to be there.”

“When you watched the boys win a final and all of that, you don’t have to say anything, but you just know, from each other’s faces”.

During his absence, Archer claimed he felt like a “burden.”

“I’ve seen a few comments, people saying ‘ he’s on the longest paid holiday I’ve ever seen'”, said Archer.

Months of rehab followed, most of which were completed in Barbados but mostly at home in Sussex.

His family, dogs and two parrots – Jessie and James, named after Pokemon characters – live just 150m or so from the idyllic Windward Cricket Club.

Archer can be seen in the Kensington Oval, the island’s renowned test stadium, or in the nets there. On occasions, Mahmood flew out to train with his England team-mate while both were coming back from similar injuries.

Jof has very high standards, according to Mahmood, though he might not be vocal about it or try to convey that impression.

“We had net batters who used to come in and one brought a tripod to set his camera up.

We resembled “you what,” and I could see Jof in particular. He just cranked it up straight away. He acts as soon as you give him a chance to do something.

England’s management hinted at regrets in initial attempts to rush Archer back and have since developed carefully-laid plan, the work of England’s elite pace bowling coach Neil Killeen.

Every match that Archer would play up until his Test debut this summer, as well as an Ashes winter, has a PDF mapping out in a PDF. He has hit the vast majority to this point.

Archer hasn’t had back or elbow issues since he returned from the T20 World Cup last year despite only playing white-ball cricket. At that tournament no-one took more wickets for England in their run to the semi-finals, while a hostile spell at Lord’s against Australia in a one-day international in September suggested the magic was still there.

That doesn’t mean it was a pleasant surprise. There have been poor days and, with expectations still remarkably high, criticism too.

People “are just very quick to judge,” Mahmood says, and they only do so with Jof when they are at their best.

” He’ll run in and he’ll bowl 150kph and if he goes for runs, people will look at the runs and if he runs in and bowls mid-135s people will talk about his speed not necessarily his figures.

“It definitely energizes him,” he said.

” He’s the kind of guy, even for me, I won’t joke around with.

His bowling coach at Rajasthan Royals was the former New Zealand bowler Shane Bond – another who knows a thing or two about trying to come back after serious injuries.

It hurts for anyone who experiences a day like that, according to Bond.

“There’s no doubt he was hurting a bit. You take a little beating from your ego, I know I did that myself.

” I think that’s a credit to how quickly he bounced back. He was hurt, but he just recovered and brushed it off. He got back to the training ground, trained brilliantly, was really focused and knew what he wanted to do and had to do. “

Archer was the Royals’ highest wicket-taker at the end of the IPL.

The unknown question now is what sort of red-ball bowler can Archer be. Is he the same electric seamer who won the 2019 Lord’s Cup in whites?

” That pace and that hostility that he has are all still there, “Bond says.

He is undoubtedly quick enough to cause problems, despite the fact that you always lose a few thousand kph at the top end after having that back surgery.

Predicting red-ball form from white-ball results is notoriously difficult, some might say futile.

Archer’s pace decreases over the course of his one-day international matches, which is interesting but not as much as it did before. Part of that is because he bowled more slower balls at the death.

Perhaps more significantly, Archer bowls almost half as many outswingers in ODIs since his latest comeback than he did in 2019 – a delivery which is crucial in a fast bowler’s armoury.

Some refute Archer’s claim that he never outsprinted. Another point made is that it is simply a result of his diet of white-ball cricket, where a pace bowler tries to give a right-hander as little width as possible.

Bond says, “He starts just outside the stumps and swings back in.”

” He certainly has the ability to turn his wrist around and swing the ball out, but I don’t think you’re gonna get a big banana outswinger.

People get carried away trying to swing it both ways like legendary Jimmy Anderson. But as long as he can move the ball, that’s the critical thing”.

He’s “extremely dangerous” there because of how much he can swing the ball, Bond claims. “He gets bounce and even in the IPL and on good wickets, he was generally knocking over good players and causing problems.

That’s the type of player you’re looking for in red-ball cricket, you might say.

“He also has that psychological impact because people know what he is capable of.

Jofra appears to possess that type of aura. When he gets it right there’s something just unique about the way he does things. “

The biggest question is whether Archer’s body can support the strain of cricket’s longest format.

Australia captain Pat Cummins made his Test debut as an 18-year-old but did not play again for five years because of a series of injuries, including back stress fractures. In the second half of his career, he went on to become one of the greatest of all time.

Bond, though, managed only eight more Tests after his back was fused with titanium wire in a bid to fix the issues in 2003.

The worry factor, according to Bond, is “the biggest thing.”

” He’s had the combination of back and elbow, so the biggest risk for both is that the increase in load and intensity and for both of those areas.

“I can’t speak for Jof, but having my back against me never went away. For the rest of my career when I bowled I always worried that it might go ping because you knew the repercussions if it did”.

After this year’s IPL, Archer’s preparations for a Test return began seriously after his return to Sussex.

Initially bowling with a guard on his thumb to protect an injury that ruled him out of the white-ball series against West Indies, Archer began with one spell per day followed by a rest, then two spells and eventually bowling on back-to-back days in the nets, largely to Sussex bowling coach James Kirtley.

Then, on June 22, Archer’s first first first first-class game of his career arrived.

Playing for Sussex against Durham he took 1-32 across 18 overs – the most he had bowled in a match for more than four years.

Afterward, Archer claimed that the day he returned with the ball was “the longest” he had ever had, but he appeared to be referring to the lifeless pitch at Chester-le-Street rather than the tiredness of his legs.

“He threatened the right-handers outside edge”, former England bowler Steven Finn says.

“Everything wasn’t coming in as we might have seen in the white-ball cricket,” he said.

” What I saw was the ball holding its line to right-handed batters, which is a really positive sign to see his wrist right behind the ball.

If that weren’t possible, that wouldn’t be the case.

That England have opted to recall Archer after only one innings – Sussex did not bowl in the second innings of the Durham draw – shows how highly they rate him.

Bond points out that he is one of those bowlers that you get awestruck by watching, and that there aren’t many of them.

“Whether it be]India bowler Jasprit] Bumrah or Jofra, there’s a level of excitement because they just make it look easy”.

He continues, “Just temper the expectations.”

” I still think it’s going to be exciting to watch him bowl and I still think he’ll do something awesome but just realise that it’s never easy coming back from an injury like that.